Remembering Narnia
by shadowchild25
Summary: A story about Susan that I believe could work well in the movie-verse, to tie in the original characters to stories beyond those of the Eustace and the Pevensies, and give Susan the proper ending she deserves. Involves my other story Closure.
1. Chapter 1

_I just got the movie guide to LLW. This was bad news- now I am busily planning an idea for how to complete the chronicles in movie form appropriately._

_I'm curious as to how people think this should go- the book to movie process. As I see it, we have five main stories that must be shot in some sequence, and two that are floaters- Magician's Nephew and Horse and His Boy- but where's the draw for all the strictly movie fans (because we know there are many) if all our favorite characters have moved on?_

_--- Susan, perhaps?_

_This is my vision- critiques welcome, but please don't bash the entire idea.- I can't imagine the movies without the original characters- this is my personal idea on how to fix that._

_This would be the beginning of Magician's Nephew, which I envision being the sixth movie, although that causes problems for the End of Last Battle- though I have some ideas on how to fix that too…_

_I originally wrote this as a loose screenplay, but changed it into what I hope reads as a more pleasing narrative (my screenplay was hurried, and very poorly written)._

_Magician's Nephew Introduction:_

She was dancing with a fox, which was rather difficult, considering the height difference. But this fox had done so much for her family and country- she was seeing him in the jaws of a vicious wolf, even as he charmed her as they danced. Her brothers were dancing with dryads, her sister was being led in an intricate dance with a strange, half man half- goat? The faun, the faun, oh what was his name- he was lively and spritely and young and handsome. But he had been hard and cold as stone once- he'd been stone!

The ball room disappeared, and the scene changed quickly to one of her and her siblings, playing in a field. But it wasn't here, in England, it was there, in the world where she danced with talking foxes, oh what a strange world!

She heard their voices, Lucy and Edmund, singing a duet together, even as they were dancing, even as they were playing with her and Peter, and then suddenly they were standing together, older, and she could see them singing.

"Well done, Lu!" Peter said, jumping up from a golden chair next to her. "That was brilliant."

"And I suppose my job wasn't amazing?" Edmund joked.

"You can't carry a tune in a bucket," Peter scoffed.

"He lies, we all know you sing better than him, Ed," Susan laughed, "he's just jealous. Magnificent he may be, but magnificent singer he is not."

All three laughed as they turned to look at her, but as they laid eyes on her, she gasped in pain, and their solid forms disappeared in the blink of an eye.

-----------------

Susan woke with a gasp, her face puffy with the tears of the night before. "Susan," came the voice of her aunt from her doorway. The room was full of moving boxes, bare except for a picture of a boat hanging on the wall. The wardrobe was wide open, with bright colored ball gowns spilling from it, crammed in with little care. Susan closed her eyes again, sighing, before she sat up and got out of the bed.

She shot a brief, angry glance at the ball gowns spilling from the closet, which she remembered dancing in so many nights! But those nights were as unlike as they were like the dream she'd just had- the one that flitted away from her whenever she tried to grasp it, a dream of herself dancing with an odd partner.

"An odd dream," she told herself firmly, shaking her head to clear it of the last vestiges of the memory, even if it had been good. It had also been painful, like this week.

Her memories were persistent. One from just two weeks ago flashed into her head.

She was at a party, with a friend. "Where's your brother? I thought your siblings were invited tonight?" her friend asked, surveying the room.

"Peter went to a dinner party at the professors house with Edmund and Lucy," Susan replied, her interest on the other side of the room.

"Oh," the friend replied, looking disappointed. "That's a shame. Why aren't you there with them?"

Susan's face looked dark and stormy for a second, before she wiped it clear. "I had no interest in the silly things that they would be discussing, Mary Anna. Please, let's not think on it. I'm much more interested with making sure Lizzy Bane doesn't spend the entire night hanging off Tom, because last week he told me he'd spend this evening with me, and she not exactly letting him get anywhere near enough that he could ask me." She grabbed her friend and dragged her towards the couple in question as the memory faded.

"I should have gone, Peter," Susan said to the empty spare bedroom in her Aunt and Uncle's home. "I'm so sorry I didn't. I'm so sorry I fought with you."

She began to cry as she picked up the black dress.

----------

She'd stopped crying by the time she reached the church. Her aunt and uncle sat to one side of her in the first pew. Six coffins stood at the front of the church, with pictures of her parents, siblings and cousin standing in front of each coffin. The accident necessitated the closed coffin, and her uncle had had to identify the remains. Susan wished she could look on her family's faces, but she knew that she couldn't have. As the service began around her, she stared at the coffins, seeing flashes of her siblings superimposed on the still images staring down at her, benevolent and kind.

There was Peter, as he had been during the war, yelling at Edmund, then dazed and confused in a crowded train station, saying farewell to their mother. There were memories from the boring days and the happy days spent at the Professor's place.

There was the sad memory of the angry Peter, fighting five boys singlehandedly, and just barely holding his own, until his brother had joined him in the fray. "I had it sorted," he'd growled unthankfully, before he'd said, "I wasn't always."

"You weren't always what?" Susan murmured to his picture, straining to remember.

She shook her head and her gaze fell on Edmund's picture. His grin jumped to mind, his crushed and broken spirit during the air raid, holding to their father's picture. His distraction during a game of cricket, then his happiness in the latter half of the summer- gone was the surly boy, but why? There was fear and pride in him warring in her, because she knew something was wrong, or had been very wrong in those memories, during that span of time when he'd changed. Something was definitely wrong, because her brother was dead, at nineteen, but something had been wrong then too.

The pastor said something she didn't hear, and she was late to stand, as images continued to flash through her head, ones she couldn't focus on well enough, fuzzy at the edges and silent like an old movie. The boys were fighting, but not angrily, and on horseback with swords. And then there was a scene of battle.

And her brother lay dying.

A scream rose in her throat, and she choked off the thoughts, which were coming around to an image of Edmund gasping, the wreckage of a train around him, but she could see it so clearly because she'd seen him like that before- she'd seen him dying. They'd all died, in horrible pain, and her imagination was grasping at it, at the screams that must have rent the air, a vision pulled together from the pieces she'd heard of the accident, and her memories of war and fear (they seemed so much more numerous than they should).

"You didn't really want to" Lucy to her, in strange clothes, her eyes sad. Susan's eyes unwillingly were drawn to her dearest sister, thoroughly confused.

Remembering Lu was remembering the innocence of youth, without growth. She'd matured without aging- a child in the body of a beautiful young woman.

Images danced, swirled around her, making her head spin, of Lucy as a frightened child, being sent away, Lucy at the Professor's.

Lucy running from wolves in her nightmares, talking to trees, her stories.

Lucy running from wolves that were trying to get them, trying to get them all, Lucy throwing her dagger, Lu on horseback, running from yet more danger, Lucy happy, Lucy sad, Lucy angry-

Lucy in Susan's arms again, safe from runaway trains.

The worst memory was the last memory, of the night before she'd died. Lucy was glaring angrily at her. "Why won't you take your head out of the clouds, and remember? Remember what you once were, Susan Pevensie. What you once _did_. _Who_ you once were, and come back!"

"I don't remember, Lucy," Susan whispered. "I don't remember."

She closed her eyes as the funeral drew to a close, everyone weeping around her, and one image lingered clearly against the backdrop of the alter, of the four of them together, standing before thrones. Then it too faded into darkness, everything faded until she couldn't see anything. "I don't remember," Susan repeated softly, into the void.

-------------

Susan knew that the world was moving on without her. The sun rose and set, flowers grew and died, the trees shed their leaves. It had been Autumn when it happened, then Winter came and stole away the last vestiges of color from the world, and Spring dawned with colors, but they were never so bright as they had been last Spring and those before them, and even Summer's warmth could not thaw her frozen sorrow. The moving boxes disappeared, except for three, hidden in a corner, which held everything most precious to each of her siblings. The dresses in her wardrobe slowly disappeared, as darker colors, mourning colors, took over. Even on happy days, there was no color in Susan's heart.

"Susan," her aunt said from the doorway, looking in on her niece, who sat on the bed, staring out the window, "Mary Anna is here to walk with you to work."

**This would be about where the first two chapters of my story Closure would fit in.**


	2. Remembering Narnia Chapter 4

**I should mention again to anyone who read the first chapter, the part that would have come before this is actually the first two chapters of another one of my stories- Closure. I would've just added those chapters again, but that's against the rules. So, if you are interested in this, I'd suggest checking out the first two chapters of Closure, then coming back here. That was a story that I came up with before I began thinking how Susan's closure could be worked into the movie-verse, since we never see an end for her in the books.**

**I think I mentioned before, but in my head this is one idea of how I would begin the movie for Magician's Nephew, which is why screen directions show up randomly during this one...**

**So anyways- Chronologically, this fits in after Closure Chapter 2... Susan has remembered Narnia, spoken with Aslan, beaten an old rival named Dylan at his own game (archery) and Dylan has just witnessed the conversation between Aslan and Susan. I'm not sure how closely the next one will fit with the other chapters of Closure, I just don't want to get in trouble!**

_"I think I should like to hear the rest of these stories," Dylan replied, "from the beginning."_

_Susan smiled, and began- "It all started with the war, when we were sent from London to the Professor's house- that's where Lucy found the Wardrobe…"_

* * *

"Tell me more about it," Dylan begged, escorting Susan from the church into the late afternoon sunshine. The sun was dipping toward the horizon. They'd sat in the church for several hours, the scent of Narnia hanging about them, as Susan had told him the story of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, "tell me everything."

"Everything," Susan laughed, "where do I start?"

"From the beginning! We could go sit down at the park and you could tell me the story of Narnia that you hinted at. You know more than you told in the story."

"Of course I do, that was certainly not the end of our adventure. We lived in Narnia for fifteen years!"

He stopped dead, and because they were holding hands without knowing it, he dragged Susan backwards slightly. "But you haven't aged that much!"

"That's because when we came back through the Wardrobe, we'd only been gone for a few hours. It made for a difficult transition- we'd been Kings and Queens, and then suddenly we were little more than schoolchildren."

"Oh, please tell me everything."

"Oh no, I will do no such thing, not yet. You asked for a tale of the beginning. I'll give you a tale of the beginning. But first, we'll have to travel back in time, to the birth of Narnia."

"You know that far back?" Dylan asked, awestruck, leading her into the park.

"Yes, now don't interrupt," she scolded, sitting down on a bench, and indicating that he should join her there. "Strangely enough, the story of Narnia begins here in England, long ago when your grandfather was a child, in the town of London…"

**___________________**

**Susan/Dylan scene fades upward from the trees around the park, into the setting sun sky, then pans down onto the beginning scene of the Magician's Nephew, with Polly under a tree**

**The Magician's Nephew, no narration (with everything but the tale of the tree falling down)**

**Final scene is of the house in the country surround by trees, panning up towards the sky, and the camera comes back down on the night scene of Dylan and Susan in the park, surrounded by trees.**

**______________**

Susan and Dylan were laying on the ground in the park, staring up at the night sky, surrounded by a few wildflowers, some of which were braided into a crown, and lay forgotten in Dylan's hands.

"Wow," Dylan said breathlessly.

"Yeah. It was quite a tall tale by the time we first heard it in Narnia, helped along by the face that the people we ruled had lived under the Witch's rule for ages."

"I could imagine, although it still seems quite a tall enough tale despite the fact that I feel you know the truth of it. How'd you find out about everything that happened afterwards?"

"The same way that we found out about the true tale of everything else that happened, after the story was through. One year, there was a large storm in England, and the apple tree fell down. Digory couldn't bear to have it cut up for firewood, so he had it made into a gorgeous wardrobe…" Susan the idea of it hang in the air between them.

"It can't be," Dylan whispered, turning on his side to stare at Susan, "the Professor?"

"Yes," she laughed, raising up on her elbow to look him in the eyes. "Professor Digory Kirke, whose house we stayed in that lovely summer." She looked around her. "Oh dear, it's so late! I should have been home hours ago! Harold and Alberta will we be worried." She jumped to her feet and pulled him to his. Still holding hands, they raced back to her front door.

As she turned to say good-bye to him, she noticed the crown of flowers in his hand at last. "What is that?" she asked curiously.

"Oh, I, uh, my sisters used to make me make them for them. Uh, it's a crown."

"Lucy and I used to do that all the time, here and in Narnia." Susan told him, smiling sadly.

"Well, I made it for you, Queen Susan," he replied, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Once a Queen of Narnia," he began, putting the crown on her head.

"Always a Queen of Narnia," Susan finished, grinning.

"I'm sorry I've been so beastly in the past," he apologized. "I didn't know, this afternoon when I teased you, about your family."

"Don't apologize," she replied, touching her finger to his lips to silence him. "If it hadn't been for you, I may never have remembered."

"If I could come again tomorrow, would you mind? And would you tell me more? About you and your brothers and sister, in Narnia?"

"Of course that'd be fine. I'll tell you about our second visit, how about that? The noble tale of Prince Caspian the tenth, who fought to free Narnia from the clutches of his evil Uncle, Lord Miraz."

"I'd like that," Dylan grinned, right before he leaned in to kiss her lightly on the lips. He pulled back, ran a hand through his hair, embarrassed, and walked off.

Susan remained frozen in disbelief, before moving her hand to her lips. "tomorrow then," she murmured, turning to go in the door, sparing one last glance at his fading form. "I'd like that."

**And to end the scene, and the movie- the camera pans out from her door, up to the night sky, where the stars twinkle and the Lion roars.**


End file.
